CALAMITY HOWLER/A.V. Krebs

Dark Side of Ag Economy

"That farmers are poor, that they could not survive without
government programs, that food supplies would be inadequate without
the programs, that corporations would take over farming without the
programs, that the family farm has got to be preserved because it's
essential for democracy or that programs are essential to preserve
the rural community: All of these things, all of it is myth. All
myth."

Among those agricultural economists who seek to rationalize,
defend and justify the role of corporate agribusiness in America's
rural economy, no single individual is more outspoken than Ohio
State's Luther Tweeten, a professor of agricultural economics.

For Tweeten, destroying the nation's family farm system, enslaved
to the myths of the "dark side of the farm personality," has become a
holy and righteous crusade.

Believing that social scientists must confront those myths that
"may have made life tolerable for many farmers but which also have
provided a psychological and ideological climate where paranoia,
scapegoating, violence, armed confrontation, intimidation and fear"
abound, Tweeten sees a number of "antisocial" roots that have
precipitated this "dark side of the farm personality." They
include:

2) A basic sense of superiority or "essentiality," in part
motivated by "farm fundamentalism";

3) A strong problem-solving orientation; and

4) More intense social and economic ties by families to farming
than ties by others to their industries.

While acknowledging that farmers "have reason to complain" when
it comes to the "quantum failure of fiscal policy" in recent years,
Tweeten seeks to lay the main burden of that failure simply on real
interest and exchange rates and federal deficits, which he suggests
are due in large part to over-generous subsidies to farmers.

Meanwhile, he ignores factors such as increasing economic
concentration by corporations in the farm and food sector, and the
failure of the "free enterprise" system to maintain a fair price for
commodities, as having played any role in our recent ag policy
debacles.

"Farm fundamentalism is the belief that farming is not only a
superior way of life but also represents the highest ideals of the
nation ... [it] holds that the nation's political and social
system cannot survive without the type of person the farm way of life
produces. In economic philosophy, the ideal holds new wealth derives
only from raw materials and that the farmer must prosper for the
nation to prosper."

Rather than naively sharing Tweeten's negative characterization
of "farm fundamentalism," it is important to recognize it for the
truth it contains and the manner in which it has been subtly used and
cleverly manipulated by corporate agribusiness to subjugate family
farmers through myths.

Rather than expressing admiration for the strong problem-solving
orientation that people have come to associate with the farm
character, some commentators like Tweeten contend that this too is
also one of the roots of antisocial behavior which is reflected in
the "dark side of the farm personality."

While acknowledging on one hand that farmers are "impatient with
intellectualizing and bureaucratic procedures" and "are accustomed to
improvising and taking matters into their own hands to create
solutions by expedient means," Tweeten ignores the large role that
corporate agribusiness has played in fostering such distrust by
condescendingly declaring that "the greater economic problems of
farmers have roots beyond the farm gate and are less tractable to
individual action and initiative than are problems of a sick cow or
nutrient-deficient crops."

"Farmers must destroy the myth that there is a divine law which
states they must lose title to their commodities at the farm gate. We
have reached the level of sophistication in this country where
everybody is making a profit on agricultural commodities except the
farmers who produce them."

Tweeten, however, not surprisingly as a defender of former USDA
Secretary Earl Butz's school of "get big or get out," decries the
need for destroying such a myth.

"I have found widespread support among farm people for two
propositions: 1) Washington and the market perennially have not
favored them, and 2) they need more political and economic bargaining
power to serve the needs of farmers and society. Each point has
dubious validity."

The concern among family farmers that commodity markets do not
favor them and that, unless the family farm system of agriculture is
preserved, the nation's food production will fall into the hands of a
few large corporations who would then have the ability to both
control and raise food prices, Tweeten labels as "overblown and
inconsistent rhetoric."

The Ohio State economist, however, a longtime advisor to the
USDA, betrays his real fears and those of corporate agribusiness in
general when he adds that "this incorrect assertion often prefaces
the assertion that family farmers must organize to control
production, raise farm prices and in general find their ultimate
economic security in greater economic bargaining power." (Emphasis
added.)

While totally ignoring the role and character of modern-day
corporate agribusiness (multinational, economically concentrated and
profit hungry by its very nature), Tweeten explains away his
position. "First, farmers are too independent and numerous to congeal
into the tightly controlled bargaining organization required to
affect farm economic outcomes.

"Second, the auto and steel labor unions have demonstrated that
even powerful bargaining groups are unable to preserve jobs and
earnings when domestic industries operate in an open global
economy.

"Third, given that a facilitative public policy is required for
farmers to bargain collectively, the public is unlikely to give any
group arbitrary control over food supplies. To do so would place the
public at risk and at the mercy of groups whose first concern would
be self-interest rather than safe, abundant, quality food supplies at
reasonable prices."

By insisting that the family farm system does not suffer from
federal neglect and that farmers do not need more economic and
political bargaining power, Tweeten only demonstrates the validity of
a major concern of the agrarian reform movement of a century ago:
that the nation's "communities of economic interests" remain
unalterably opposed to farmers organizing for their own economic and
political survival.

"Agrarian reformers," in the words of historian Lawrence Goodwyn,
"attempted to overcome a concentrating system of finance capitalism
that was rooted in Eastern commercial banks and which radiated
outward through trunk-line railroad networks to link in a number of
common purposes much of America's consolidating corporate community.
Their aim was structural reform of the American economic system."

The fact that populism thrived for nearly a decade in the late
1800s by preaching that genuine political democracy was impossible
without economic democracy explains why, in the century that
followed, "agrarian revolt," corporate America and its experts like
Tweeten have sought to discredit and demean any renewed moves by the
nation's farmers to assert that same economic and political power
they so forcefully applied in the late 1800s.